The House is gearing up for a vote on the Defense Appropriations Bill (basically, the budget for the Department of Defense) and a bipartisan coalition of Representatives will be introducing a novel amendmentthat attempts to strike at funding for one type of particularly egregious surveillance power of the NSA.

EFF thinks this amendment is an important step in curbing the NSA’s domestic surveillance and urges concerned citizens to call immediately to voice your support. You can call your Representative (look up your Representative by zip code here, or find the phone number here) or you can use the easy call-in tool at Defund the NSA, which lets you look up your Representative by zip code and gives you a sample script for the call.

Reps. Justin Amash, John Conyers, Jr., Thomas Massie, Mick Mulvaney, and Jared Polis are proposing an amendment that would curtail funding for the implementation of orders under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act unless the order is expliticly limited in scope.

The new limitation reads (emphasis added):

This Order limits the collection of any tangible things (including telephone numbers dialed, telephone numbers of incoming calls, and the duration of calls) that may be authorized to be collected pursuant to this Order to those tangible things that pertain to a person who is the subject of an investigation described in section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1861).

Read more on EFF and let your Representative know how you feel about the amendment.